The Restless Multitalent of the Dutch Eighties
Maarten Ploeg (born Maarten Jaap Jan van der Ploeg, 1958–2004) was one of those rare artists who refused to stay inside a single discipline. Painter, musician, and television maker, he moved fluidly between canvas, stage, and screen, and in doing so became one of the more distinctive figures to emerge from the Amsterdam art scene of the late 1970s and 1980s.
Born in Arnhem in 1958, Ploeg trained at the audio-visual department of Amsterdam’s Gerrit Rietveld Academie, later continuing his studies at Ateliers ’63. It was at the Rietveld that he met his partner, artist Ryu Tajiri, and began shaping the ideas that would drive his work for the next two decades.
Alongside fellow artist Peter Klashorst, Ploeg formed the Dutch core of De Nieuwe Wilden (the New Wild Ones), a painting movement that made waves around 1980 with bold, expressive canvases. While most of his peers worked figuratively, Ploeg leaned toward abstraction. His talent was recognized early: he received the Royal Award for Painting in 1982 and the Prix de Rome base prize for painting in 1985.
Ploeg’s creative restlessness spilled into music too. In 1978, he and Klashorst founded the art-punk band Soviet Sex, whose later lineup would include singer Ellen ten Damme and painter Bart Domburg. He also sang and played guitar in Blue Murder, Astral Bodies, and Interior — bands whose visually inventive music videos, which he often art-directed, saw him move through the frame with a theatricality that drew comparisons to Talking Heads frontman David Byrne.
Perhaps Ploeg’s most forward-looking contribution came in the late 1980s, when he turned to computer and video art — years before it became a recognized field. From 1989 he taught at the Rietveld Academie’s former Audio-Visual department, where, together with Peter Mertens, he founded the MediaLab workshop and introduced students to the Amiga computer as a creative tool.
For the video on the Den Haag exhibition: here is the link:
Ploeg died of cancer in Amsterdam in 2004 at age 45. His work has kept finding new audiences since: a tribute exhibition at Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam in 2006, a retrospective publication in 2018, and a major Kunstmuseum Den Haag exhibition in 2023 revisiting his place in Dutch art history.
More than anything, Ploeg’s career is a reminder that the most interesting work often happens where painting, music, and technology collide. For more publications on Ploeg please visit www.ftn-books.com
